


Marcus Done

by Persiflage



Series: Mashed Up Tropes Fics [7]
Category: Holby City
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bernie Wolfe/Marcus Dunn (Mentioned), Bernie Wolfe: World's Okay-est Lesbian, F/F, Implied/Referenced Sex, Mash-up, Masturbation, Originally Posted on Tumblr, POV Outsider, Serena Campbell: Bisexual Extraordinaire, Trope de Trope, Tumblr Prompt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:07:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27247030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Persiflage/pseuds/Persiflage
Summary: Canon divergence: everyone keeps mistaking Bernie and Serena for a couple, much to Marcus Dunn's annoyance.
Relationships: Serena Campbell/Bernie Wolfe
Series: Mashed Up Tropes Fics [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1960414
Comments: 2
Kudos: 60





	Marcus Done

**Author's Note:**

> Written for an Anon for the Mashed Up Tropes Meme on Tumblr, for the tropes: 63. Everybody Knows/Mistaken for Couple and 81. The Missus and the Ex

“Dunn.”

Marcus Dunn half turns away from the bar at the sound of his name and sees Sir Horace Powell, a very wealthy man who regularly donates to St James’ at these Holby City Hospitals fundraising events. He hasn’t seen the man since the last one a year ago and he rather hopes Powell will be as generous as usual.

“Good evening, Sir Horace,” he says, bestowing a genial smile on the other man. “What are you drinking?”

“Scotch. Double. On the rocks,” answers Powell with his usual taciturnity. “What’s going on with that wife of yours and the deputy CEO from Holby City General Hospital?”

Dunn gives him a baffled look, then turns around more fully and gazes over at the Holby City table. He doesn’t choose to tell Powell, just yet, that Berenice Wolfe is no longer his wife. That’s touching a nerve that’s still raw: it’s only been a couple of months since he came home from work one day and she told him that she wanted a divorce. Which had been absurd enough, but then she’d compounded the absurdity by telling him that she was a lesbian and had had an affair with a woman colleague during her last tour, before she got blown up so spectacularly by that IED. There are days when he almost wishes she hadn’t survived, then he wouldn’t have needed to know that his wife of twenty five years had cheated on him with another woman. It pisses him off to know that while he was slaving away to keep their family together and to maintain their family home with all the comforts she seemed to take for granted whenever she was home on leave, she was busy shagging her subordinates, and not even the male ones.

“Nothing, Sir Horace,” he says, although he can clearly see that the deputy CEO, Serena Campbell, is gazing like a moonstruck calf at his ex-wife. It’s sickening, he thinks, and wonders if there’s some way to get her into trouble. Henrik Hanssen, to whom his ex is talking animatedly, doesn’t seem to care, though. 

“Doesn’t look like nothing to me,” Sir Horace says. “Didn’t realise Campbell was one of those unnatural women who get into bed with other women. Better keep an eye on your wife, Dunn, or she might get seduced.”

Dunn wants to tell him that (a) it’s too late for him to take care, and (b) Berenice Wolfe is such a cold fish that Serena Campbell is unlikely to succeed in seducing her, but since Powell has already made his views clear on the topic of homosexuality, and he knows that Powell strongly disapproves of divorce, he keeps his mouth shut at least until the other man’s cheque is in his wallet. He quickly turns the conversation to how well Powell’s horse had done at Ascot, pushing thoughts of his ex-wife from his mind.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Half an hour later, with Powell’s cheque in his wallet, and two others in addition, he’s reminded of his ex-wife once again by the arrival at his side of Lady fforbes-Hamilton. “I say, Marcus, my love, whoever is that woman your wife’s gazing so longingly at?”

Dunn just manages not to choke on his Scotch. “Good evening, Lady Audrey,” he says, kissing her cheek and scarcely succeeding in not choking on the cloud of perfume that seems to surround her.

Lady Audrey rubs her hand up and down his forearm. “Darling, the silver haired woman on the Holby City General table, who is she?”

“That’s the hospital’s deputy CEO,” he tells her, once again resigned to talking about his ex-wife. “Serena Campbell.”

“She’s a bit sexy looking, don’t you think?”

Ordinarily he’d agree, and if it wasn’t for who she works alongside, he might’ve been tempted to make a play for her, but this evening is making it quite plain that he doesn’t stand a chance with Serena Campbell, not when she’s busy making cow’s eyes at his ex and his ex is making cow’s eyes back.

“Do you think so?” he hedges, not willing to admit that he finds her sexy. 

“Oh definitely, darling. I can’t say that I’m surprised that Berenice is so entranced with her. I’m just a teensy bit surprised that you’re not more bothered by it. You’re normally so territorial, darling.” She presses closer to him, her breasts brushing against his upper arm, and he’s reminded, unwillingly, that she’d once propositioned him with the suggestion that he and Bernie join her for a threesome. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been nearly pissed enough at the time to pass on the suggestion to his ex; he’d also assumed she was too much of a prude to agree to such a thing. He shifts uncomfortably as he feels his body beginning to react to his thoughts.

Lady Audrey chuckles, pressing even closer to his body. Her hand ‘accidentally’ slides off his arm and brushes against his burgeoning erection. “Do you think Bernie would be up for that threesome I suggested last time we met?” she asks, her voice low and gravelly. 

Dunn can only stutter, unable to form a coherent sentence as she toys with him through the fabric of his trousers. He’s beginning to thicken and lengthen inside his underpants and he can’t help wondering, wildly, if she’s planning on getting him off right here, in front of his colleagues and her peers. 

“Oh, I see,” Lady Audrey says suddenly, her hand dropping from where she’d been cupping his balls. “I’m barking up the wrong tree, aren’t I?” She chuckles, a rich, filthy sound, her breath hot on his ear. “She’s dumped you, hasn’t she, and what, shacked up with the lovely Serena?” 

She steps back, smirking, her eyes glinting with amusement. “I think it’s about time I made the acquaintance of Serena Campbell.” She turns and saunters off, hips swaying seductively.

Dunn stumbles off towards the gents, moving awkwardly. The place is empty when he arrives, so he quickly locks himself in one of the cubicles, then swiftly takes care of himself. He feels a rush of rage and shame as he washes his hands afterwards. How dare his ex-wife make a mockery of him in front of wealthy donors? He’ll make her pay for this.

When he returns to the ballroom a good many people are now up and dancing, and when he looks over at the Holby City table, his ex is nowhere in sight, though the deputy CEO is leaning across her empty chair to talk to Henrik Hanssen. He growls, then turns away, just in time to spot a familiar blonde head at the bar. It really sickens him that she’s made such a huge effort to look so good tonight, albeit in a slim, tailored pinstripe suit, and with her hair unusually sleek and up at the back of her neck. Whenever she’d attended one of these with him while home on leave she’d made no effort at all with her hair, and she’d always worn a dress with an obviously disgruntled air.

He marches up to her and jabs her in the shoulder, then startles when she reaches up and grabs his fingers, squeezing them painfully. “I don’t like people touching me without my permission,” she growls, then turns to look at him. The look she gives him makes him recoil, feeling as if she’s flaying his skin, the glare is so scorching.

“Oh, it’s you,” she says, her voice dripping with disdain. “What do you want?”

“To talk to you,” he snarls, “though it gives me no pleasure.”

“Well it’ll give me no pleasure either, so why don’t you pop off and play with your mates from St James’, and leave me in peace?”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that,” he says hotly, then recoils again when she squeezes his fingers a second time. He wonders how he hadn’t previously noticed she still had hold of them.

“I’ll talk to you however I like, Dunn,” she says, her voice still full of contempt. “We’re done and I don’t have to appease you or minimise myself for you ever again.”

“You appease me?” he scoffs. “You never did.”

“I routinely did everything I could to appease you throughout twenty five years of marriage to you,” she says through gritted teeth. “Now piss off, before I make you.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” he begins, seething with rage.

She drops his hand, then shoves at his shoulder, and he’s startled to find himself pushed back a couple of paces from the force of her shove.

“I believe the lady asked you to leave her alone,” chips in another voice.

He looks up in surprise to find Serena Campbell, silver haired and resplendent in a ruby red silk dress, glaring at him. 

“Do yourself a favour, Mister Dunn, and go home before things get ugly.”

He sneers. “Well, you’d know all about ugly, wouldn’t you, Ms Campbell, given the way you treated your ex-husband.”

He yelps when a hand descends on his shoulder, putting a very painful pressure on his collarbone. 

“Mind your manners, Marcus Dunn,” growls his ex-wife. “Or I’ll make you regret ever being rude to a woman.”

“Get off me!” Dunn gasps, as she seems to grind her thumb into his clavicle. “I’ll phone the police and report you for assaulting me.”

“Oh just try it.” 

Dunn decides he really doesn’t like being sneered at by Major Wolfe, any more than he likes being manhandled by her. 

“Get lost, Marcus, or I’ll call the cops myself.”

She lets go of him, then gives him a shove and he stumbles backwards, bumping against a couple of people, both of whom step sideways so that he staggers between them before falling to the floor. Looking up, he sees Sir Horace and Lady Audrey gazing at him with equal sneers of disdain, then they move away, leaving him sprawled where he fell.

He looks over to where his ex-wife had been standing, and sees her walking away, Serena Campbell’s hand resting on her forearm. As he watches, the two women collect their coats from the ticketed cloakroom, then they depart, Bernie’s elbow crooking towards Serena, who laughs, then hooks her arm through Bernie’s. 

He feels sick to his stomach and it takes him two attempts to pick himself up off the ballroom floor. No one offers him a hand or enquires to find out if he’s okay. He feels like a kid again, sent to Coventry for pissing off the wrong person at school.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

In the car park outside a taxi is pulling away, carrying Serena Campbell and Bernie Wolfe, who’ve been orbiting each other without really getting to know each other for the last several weeks since Bernie landed on Serena’s ward, towards Serena’s home. Serena’s heard all about Bernie’s ex-husband though – via the hospital’s ever industrious rumour mill, rather than through the woman in question. Bernie Wolfe is an incredibly private person, she’s discovered, and always seems to go about the business of AAU tight-lipped and with an air of watchfulness. Serena hasn’t been able to work out whether that watchfulness is innate to the woman herself, or merely a by-product of working for the British Army, albeit as a surgeon not a soldier. 

What Serena does know is that she finds Berenice Wolfe incredibly attractive (especially tonight in that tailored three-piece suit which seems to emphasise both the length of her legs and the slenderness of her person), and even though she’s never previously been more than friends with a woman, she definitely wants – at the very least – to kiss Major Wolfe just once. (More would be better – those thin, pink lips look so soft and inviting.)

And thanks to her earlier, very enlightening conversation with Lady Audrey fforbes-Hamilton, Serena is now aware that while she’d certainly struggled to keep her eyes off Major Wolfe during tonight’s fundraiser, Major Wolfe seemed – according to Lady Audrey – to be undergoing the same struggle. 

She is, therefore, quite hopeful about those kisses happening.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [here](https://pers-books.tumblr.com/post/629605549325025280/mashed-up-tropes-thingy-63-81).


End file.
